


Promises

by DictionaryWrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bickering, First Kiss, Humor, M/M, Other, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Michael can make any promises he likes.Jon is unwilling to take them seriously.
Relationships: Michael/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 28
Kudos: 250





	Promises

“I’m going to kill you, Archivist,” says the being called Michael, and Jon ignores it, walking past the looming figure in the doorway to his kitchen and instead making his way down the corridor, to the bedroom. “Did you hear me?” it asks from the bedroom doorway, as Jon unbuttons his cardigan, facing the other way.

“I heard you,” Jon says. His hands are shaking slightly as he drags the cardigan off his shoulders, and he hears the strange pull and tug on the air behind him, making his skin prickle and his hair stand on end, as Michael comes closer. “You told me the last time, before you were going to kill me. It didn’t take. And I don’t care.”

“You don’t _care_?” it repeats, angry, and Jon turns, and shoves it in the chest.

It makes his hand feel as though it’s full of pins and needles, but it makes Michael stumble back slightly, and it _pouts_ at him, its mouth twisting— And then Michael is smaller than that, no longer hunching to keep from going through the ceiling – still inhumanly tall, but human-looking, its hair a sandy, cascading set of curls around its shoulders.

He wonders, despite himself, how it works, that Michael and Helen should both exist at once. Michael doesn’t have the power he used to, Jon doesn’t think – he can sense that, that the scales are tipped, but the fury that comes off Michael is, if anything, more exaggerated than before. It makes sense, Jon supposes.

It doesn’t want to _be_ Michael.

“Michael,” Jon says, looking at its chest, clad in a flowing shirt that was very much from the 80s, and not at its face, “I haven’t slept in nearly forty hours. Are you going to kill me right now?”

“No,” it mumbles.

“Then _be quiet _and get out of my way.”

Michael steps back, and Jon drags his shirt over his head, going for the fastening on his jeans and shoving them down so that he could step out of them, all but having to wriggle to get himself free.

It watches him in sullen silence, its hands awkwardly held at its sides, as Jon strips down just to his undershirt and briefs, and when he brushes his teeth over the sink, he feels its eyes boring into him, its gaze focused and never wavering.

“I could kill you while you were sleeping,” it says.

“So could a cat,” Jon retorts, and shoves past it to pull his blinds closed.

“I _might_.”

“Ditto a cat.”

“_Archivist_.”

“_Michael.”_

Jon climbs into his bed, turning on his side to face away from Michael, but he can feel it, still there behind him, lingering. He’s so tired he can’t stand it, and the weight of the week is heavy on his shoulders. He’s read statements, done research, argued with Melanie and Basira and Martin all, not to mention Elias.

He’s tried to sleep in the Institute, but time and time over his dreams have turned to Sasha, to Tim, to his grandmother, to others gone and lost and departed, and he can’t deal with it, not now, not when he’s exhausted, not he can barely think straight, when he just needs to _sleep_—

It puts weight on his bed. He can feel the mattress depress with the weight of its body, but he doesn’t turn to face it.

“Were you—” Jon starts, and then closes his mouth as the bed depresses further, as he feels the body of Michael on the bed beside him spread out slightly, its feet no doubt hanging off the end. “Were you into the eighties? Before you became—”

“I don’t like to answer your questions, Archivist,” Michael says. “I am too tangled up in the asking of them.”

“I’m a monster too, you know,” Jon says. “And I got about as much choice in it as you did – I didn’t want to be like this, I didn’t want to become what I’m becoming.”

“You are becoming,” Michael says.

Jon turns to lie on his other side, and to his surprise, Michael’s eyes are closed, one hand curled under the pillow, the other fisted in the duvet that Jon is settled underneath. It looks less like someone who’s sleeping, and more like a doll that has been posed in place.

“Can you even _sleep_?” Jon asks.

It opens its eyes, and meets his gaze. “Can you?”

It does its stumbling, tangled laugh, like a creaking door on autotune, and Jon sighs lowly.

“Michael Shelley was never really intimate with other men,” it says. “He wanted to be, I believe. It was all so complicated… Until it wasn’t, any longer.” The laugh, again, and Jon closes his eyes when he feels Michael lean closer on the bed, until the radio static feeling settles over him the same way that the duvet does. Michael’s voice is soft and feather-light when it says, “You’re so warm, Archivist. She was so cold.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t actually do… _intimacy_,” Jon decides to say, slightly woodenly. “I never… felt it. Like people are meant to. Not toward women or men.”

The staticky feeling spreads over him, and then he feels it at his lips: it’s chaste and tingly, leaving a strange electricity lingering on his mouth for only a moment before it pulls away, and he sighs softly. It isn’t at all an unpleasant sensation – it’s nice, actually. Nicer than kissing usually is.

“Have you wanted to do that for a while?”

“Michael Shelley wanted so much, and knew he could have none of it. He tangled himself in knots, wanting Gerard Keay, and Gertrude knew that, Archivist. She held him as though he were bait on a string, and knew that Michael dreamed, and wanted, and that Gerard Keay would See all, but never conceive of such a thing.”

“How sad,” Jon says. He doesn’t sound sympathetic. He is, he thinks – or he would be, were he not so tired.

“I’m going to kill you,” Michael says, without conviction.

“Chop chop with it, then,” Jon says, feeling his eyelids droop, feeling the staticky rush soothe him, somehow, making him feel pleasantly warm and sleepy, able to sink down under dark grey waves. “Time’s a’wasting.”

“You will not dream,” Michael says.

“Thanks,” Jon mumbles, surprising himself by leaning in toward it. “Very kind of you.”

“I _can_ be kind,” Michael whispers, as though it is a revelation, and Jon sinks down, down, into a dreamless – if distorted – sleep.


End file.
